Hope is a Four Letter Word
by Readrbug21
Summary: The fire that is his life consumes the hope that is hers. Friendship or romance, depending on how you read it. Response to the MSF. Introspective!Daryl drabble.


A/N: Not beta'd, not proofread by anyone but myself, and written somewhat stream-of-consciousness today while I should have been studying, so please forgive any minor mistakes/errors.

For Beth, for Daryl, and for what could have been.

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><p><em>This is it,<em> he decides, as he lights up one the few remaining cigarettes in the state of Georgia. The tip glows orange, bright against the darkness of night in the woods where they stopped to make camp.

His lot in life, the touch of Midas.

Except Midas turned things to gold, at least a somewhat useful gift (even if it turned out bad in the end), and everything that Daryl touches burns to the ground. It's not even a clean kind of burn, the kind that purifies – oh no, that would make him way too lucky. When Daryl touches something, not only does it burn, the fire he starts consumes. It eats away at what he wanted, turning it from something _good_, something _useful_, something _magnificent and beautiful and wonderful _into nothing more than black smoke and dry ashes that choke him and everyone around him, filling their lungs with a poison that seeds negativity and devours them from the inside out.

He doesn't know what unlucky star he was born under, what he did in a past life to deserve this fate, but he sincerely wishes, and has every day of his life, that _something_ had intervened and taken away this horrible, deadly power.

_Someone_ almost did, he thinks, but like everything else he gets too close to, she was set aflame, and now – now she isn't here anymore to help him wave the smoke away and put out the flames that his own unique brand of arson often creates.

The worst of it all is that he never burns, never can catch fire, no matter how much he wants to. He is cursed to watch as everything, everyone around him burns brighter and brighter until suddenly nothing's left but the memory of the good and how he destroyed it.

He isn't self-pitying enough to believe he is the only one that knows the pain of constant loss, the only one with scars from plans gone awry, but this kind of thing, this teasing of the universe… he's pretty sure none of the others understand what it's like to _know_ that all the good things, all the nice things that come near him, _will_ end up broken _by_ him in some way. This _gift_, it is his and his alone, the only thing he _can't_ seem to destroy. Merle had a similar talent, but Merle seemed to enjoy watching the world go down in a blaze (even encouraged it a few times), and Daryl just hates every part of it.

And the thing is, he knows it's not something he can get rid of himself. He's lived with this unintentionally destructive force inside him his whole life, and he's tried every means he could think of to divest himself of the inferno that rages beneath his skin, in the core of his being. He needs somebody else to put out the flames in his life, because every time he tries, he just ends up spreading the fire.

He found someone, too, right here at the end of the world, all wrapped up in pale skin, pale hair, and big blue eyes. She had ways of stomping out the fires he started, preventing the flames from reaching out and enveloping their surroundings. Sure, it took her a while to figure it out (him too, if he's being honest), to realize she was capable of preventing the sparks and embers from spreading, but once she did, she made sure to do it every chance she got. It seemed to delight her to know she could do something the invincible, manly-man extraordinaire Daryl Dixon could not.

She almost seemed impervious to his devastating touch, and that made him a little too bold, made him reach a little too far and grip her a little too hard. And there's nothing or no one that can't be consumed by fire…

…but damn if she didn't come close.

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><p>My thoughts on the MSF are long and have been heard all week with varying degrees of distress and outrage by, bless their hearts, my poor husband and mother. I will sum them here by saying I am <em>not<em> _happy_, though it has inspired me to write even more. I have a couple works in progress, though they may or may not get completed and published - I have negative free time.

Despite the awful circumstances inspiring it, I hope you enjoyed my introspective Daryl drabble. I haven't written in AGES so bear with me if I'm a little rusty.


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